‘Neither could he, I think,’ Marion Hartley said. The way her lower lip trembled as she said these words let Spokes know that she was lying outright. ‘Which was why,’ she continued, ‘when I suggested that he become a game ranger, he did not take kindly to it.’ She said all this without looking at Spokes; she was definitely lying, and definitely hiding something now. ‘He thought I was making light of who he was and what he did, you see. I was not, of course. I never would … we should have argued about it, but instead he just left. I should have stopped him. I should not have let him leave. Not the way he did.’

She seemed to be saying the last three sentences to herself, and the way she said them revealed to Spokes that the truth of the entire matter lay there: in the thing that had made Emil Coetzee leave, in the thing that had made Marion Hartley let him leave without a fight.

At last Spokes knew something really worth knowing about the case. Emil Coetzee and Marion Hartley had had a discussion that had made him walk away from her. The conversation had definitely not been about his becoming a game ranger; it had been about something that mattered more to both of them than what he did for a living. Whatever it was, it had made Emil Coetzee walk into the bush unprotected and unarmed, Spokes was sure of it.

‘When he left you,’ Spokes said purposefully, and watched Marion Hartley flinch at the phrase, ‘when he left you, where did you think he was going?’

‘Home,’ she replied. She looked at him then, her eyes a little wounded.

‘Did you try to contact him there?’

‘Yes. Several times. I telephoned. Last night and this morning. I was thinking of going to the house. I was getting ready to leave when you arrived.’ All that she was saying now was true.

‘And when you could not find him, what did you think had happened?’

‘I don’t know. As I said before, I knew he needed to clear his head. I knew he needed time away from me to think things through.’

‘Because you suggested that he become a game ranger?’

Marion Hartley ignored his question and asked her own: ‘Since you have the keys, I gather you have been to the house?’

‘Yes. I was there yesterday evening.’

‘And?’

‘He was not there. There was a worker waiting for him. The gardener—’

‘Machipisa,’ Marion Hartley said.

‘Yes, that’s the one. Gave me the keys to the house.’

‘So you think Emil has been in the bush this entire time?’ Marion Hartley said, following her own train of thought. ‘He grew up there, you know, on the outskirts of the Matopos National Park.’ She sat up more confidently. ‘He is more than familiar with the territory.’